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Removable disk drives vs. tape storage for small businesses

Removable disk drives offer a lot of benefits that tape storage doesn’t. Find out if removable disk storage is right for your SMB from these tips and articles.

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Editorial Staff, SearchSMBStorage.com

Removable disk drives are a form of removable media, and they’re often compared with tape storage. Because they are disk-based, removable disk drives can often find and restore files and data faster than tape. But are removable disk drives good for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs)? Why would an SMB be interested in this technology?

Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst at The StorageIO Group, noted that removable disk drives “are a great complement to traditional fixed or non-removable disk and SSD-based storage, as well as coexist with cloud or MSP backup and archive solutions. The smaller the environment, the more affordable using [removable disk drives] becomes vs. tape for backup and archive operations, or when portability is required.”

Removable disk storage also has other big benefits. According to Schulz, removable disk drives should be able to “plug and play with your systems, appearing as disk without any extra drivers, configuration, or software tools, making for ease of use.” But there are downsides as well. Removable disk drives have a high cost per terabyte, which is generally higher than tape.

To help you decide whether removable disk drives are right for your small business environment, we’ve collected our top four tips and articles on removable disk storage. Read about the pros and cons of removable disk storage for SMBs, the newest network-attached storage (NAS) appliances from Tandberg Data and ProStor CEO’s predictions for the future of removable disk drives. Also, listen to a podcast on removable disk storage.

Removable disk drives have been around for years, but the most recent versions of this technology comes in the form of an entire disk drive with special packaging to move it from place to place. This form of the technology makes it more appealing to customers, but it isn’t for everyone, especially those who don’t currently have a tape infrastructure. Read in detail about the pros and cons of removable disk storage for SMBs.

Tandberg Data recently released three new NAS appliances with data deduplication and removable disk media for data protection. The three new appliances, the AccuVault RDX desktop DPS4510, AccuVault 1U 4 TB DPS4514 and AccuVault 1U 8 TB DPS4518, were all designed with the SMB in mind. The data deduplication function is built into the appliances, and the RDX removable disk drive option can offer small businesses an extra level of protection. Read more about the new Tandberg Data NAS appliances.

ProStor Systems is known for its RDX removable disk drives. Most recently, it’s been pushing its InfiniVault data archiving product, which adds data management software and online disk to its RDX disks. SearchDataBackup.com sat down with ProStor CEO Frank Harbist to discuss the future of ProStor and removable disk. Harbist’s big claim was that RDX will eventually replace tape for small companies and branch offices. Read the full interview about ProStor and RDX removable disk.

In this FAQ, Tory Skyers talks about removable disk drives for SMBs. He explains that there are several pros to removable disk drives such as simplicity, ease of use and a wide range of capacity. However, removable disk storage can get pricey over time, especially if you have large data backup sizes. Also, they aren’t a viable replacement for tape for offsite backup. Read the full FAQ about removable disk drives for SMBs.

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